World datelines

SYDNEY  Australian police have arrested 70 people and removed four children from their homes as part of a six-month nationwide investigation of a global child pornography network, police said Thursday.

Twenty other people have been summoned to appear in court. All 90  including a police officer and several teachers  face charges of accessing images of children being abused on the Internet, police said.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said the Interpol-led investigation was conducted simultaneously by law enforcement authorities in 170 countries.

Mexico: Monitoring sharks

ACAPULCO  Sharks will be monitored for their behavior off Mexico's Pacific coast to determine why they are swimming so close to land.

Environmental official Nadia Vela says scientists will attach transmitters to the marine predators and track them by satellite.

The operation comes after sharks recently killed two surfers and wounded a third in three separate incidents in less than a month near the southwestern resort of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo.

N. Ireland: 'Secure the peace'

BELFAST  Northern Ireland's new power-sharing leader declared Thursday that Irish Catholics and British Protestants must "secure the peace" by removing all traces of paramilitary extremism from their divided communities.

"We must learn from the past. We must not live in it," First Minister Peter Robinson told the Northern Ireland Assembly after his undisputed promotion to the top of the province's 13-month-old coalition.

Robinson, 59, succeeded Protestant preacher Ian Paisley.

Sri Lanka: Bus blast kills 19

COLOMBO  Police say a bomb explosion on a passenger bus near Sri Lanka's capital has killed at least 19 people and wounded 40 others.

EL FASHER  The U.N. Security Council got a firsthand look Thursday at the worsening conflict in Darfur, which has killed up to 300,000 people and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes.

Facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, the council delegation met with officials from the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force that has struggled to get up to its full strength of 26,000 troops since its January launch.

Turkey: Kurdish rebels attacked

ANKARA  Turkey and Iran have been carrying out coordinated strikes on Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, a top Turkish general said Thursday in the first military confirmation of Iranian-Turkish cooperation in the fight against separatists there.

Gen. Ilker Basbug, Turkey's land forces commander, said the two countries have been sharing intelligence and planned more coordinated attacks in the future against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and PEJAK, the group's Iranian wing.